1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image capturing apparatus, an image processing apparatus, an image capturing method, a recording medium and a program for obtaining information regarding a depth of a subject. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image capturing apparatus, an image processing apparatus, an image capturing method, a recording method and a program for obtaining the information regarding the depth of the subject based on parallax images of the subject.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to obtain information regarding a position of a subject to be shot, a stereo-image capturing technique has been known for a long time in which parallax images in a case where the subject is viewed from two different viewpoints are taken by two cameras arranged side by side to achieve binocular vision of a human, so as to measure the depth of the subject. From the difference of the positions of the viewpoints, the difference of the position of an image of the subject between the taken parallax images is detected. Then, based on the thus detected positional difference of the image of the subject and a focal length of a lens of each camera, a distance from the camera to the subject is obtained by triangulation. Moreover, Japanese Patent No. 2611173 (issued on Feb. 27, 1997) discloses a method in which the position of a moving object is measured by using at least three capturing devices.
This method, however, has a disadvantage that the size of an entire apparatus becomes large and therefore the processing cost required for the measurement also increases, since this method needs at least three capturing devices for the image capturing.